Carried away (I'm so punny!)

Let’s put aside our holiday stress for a moment and think about an oft-overlooked holiday tradition in many major cities, and especially here in New York: carriage horses. The ones in Central Park are a year-round tourist attraction, but at the holidays they’re done up in their drivers’ finest, with garlands and tinsel strewn about on the carriages they pull families of tourists around in. I’ve been hearing rumblings lately about these horses, comments from New Yorkers packed onto the crowded sidewalks with tourists on Central Park South: “Those poor horses. Out in the cold like this!” and: “It’s cruel what they do to those animals!” And so on.

I don’t claim to be some kind of expert on animal psychology, nor do I know much about the living conditions of these animals when they’re not in the park pulling carriages, but I do know a decent bit about horses and what they like. Actually, I love horses. I’m one of those annoying semi-priveleged girls that got to take riding lessons when she was younger and now gets all giggly and big-eyed every time she sees one. I think they’re fantastic.

But that does not mean that I have any illusions, like many others do, about horses. They are not some sort of sparkly fairy creature that will die in captivity. They are not magical unicorns. If you’ve spent any time around them, you know what I mean, and if you don’t, please, please, just listen. This may be tough on anyone who grew up reading Black Beauty or playing with My Little Ponies or even who saw Seabiscuit, but it’s true.

Horses are big, strong, smelly animals. They poop a lot, and they roll around in it, and in dirt, and they stink. They have big brown eyes and long eyelashes, but they are also very willing to bite and kick if they’re in a bad mood. They are beautiful and graceful, but they are also gigantic animals that can weight over a ton. They have been bred for thousands of years to be big and strong enough to carry people and things on their backs, or to pull them behind them. Pulling carriages is literally what most of the horses in Central Park were born to do. In fact, most draft horses can pull up to six times their own body weight easily; it hardly bears mentioning that the carriages in question, even laden with whole tourist families, don’t weigh nearly six times a 1600 lb horse.

PETA (http://www.peta.org/MC/factsheet_display.asp?ID=135), that ever-screeching bastion of wisdom about the animal kingdom, is running a campaign right now against the “abuse” of the carriage horses, maintaining that the animals live miserable lives in terrible conditions and should be taken off the streets. While I appreciate their compassion, I want to point out to each and every one of them that it’s extremely misguided. These horses were born and bred to work, and while I’m sure there are parts of their lives that are less than ideal, that is true of every living thing. While it would be great if all horses could run free in meadows full of daisies, there just aren’t that many meadow-filled daisies these days, and very few people who can afford to support horses who don’t work for a living.

PETA insists that carriage horses will “inevitably” have hoof problems leading to lameness after walking on pavement. While it’s true that they are not meant – biologically – to be treading on paved streets most of their lives, these horses are cared for by professional ferriers who outfit them with specialized shoes to protect their feet as much as possible. PETA also argues that the horses suffer from breathing car exhaust, which I can’t deny, but I beg PETA to remember that so do all of us humans, and we’re doing all right. They maintain that the stalls the horses sleep in are “restricting” and small, but I feel compelled to inquire whether any PETA member has ever been in any other horse barn. Certainly some racehorses live in giant stalls like kings, but the majority of the world’s horses spend their indoor hours in small stalls where they can turn around and take a few steps, but not much more. “And,” PETA members cry, “the horse stalls are dirty! The animals are stepping in their own feces! It’s despicable!” To which I answer, once again: Horses are animals. They poop freely whenever and wherever they want to, including in their bedding. If you are in a horse stall, no matter how big or small or dingy or clean, there is at least a 50% chance that there will be manure in it, and the horse will not be offended in the slightest. It’s a horse.

And therein lies my entire argument. “It’s a horse.” I love horses, as I’ve said before, and of course I want them to have happy and enriching lives, but pretending that they are immaculate, highly intelligent, pseudo-human creatures that somehow need to roam free in fields of grain helps no one. In fact, it just feeds further into the already existing metropolitan ignorance about animals, which in turn leads truly cruel behavior toward our four-legged friends. For instance, I’m sure I’m not the only who has seen Manhattanites pushing dogs around in strollers rather than letting them walk. Taking a dog for a walk does not mean pushing it, people. It means letting the dog walk, because it’s a dog and it needs exercise to be happy and healthy. And even many of the dogs I see walking are wearing fur coats and booties! I’ve read articles on people who spend tens of thousands of dollars getting their cats spray-painted (http://www.whypaintcats.com/). There are rumors that this is a hoax, but the idea has been planted and I wouldn’t be surprised if it starts happening in reality. We’ve all heard stories or known someone who knew someone who had a pet pig that they kept inside in a diaper and fed beer. Or seen specials on people who keep chickens in thousand-dollar houses and take them swimming. The list of atrocious behavior toward animals goes on and on, mostly because people refuse to see animals for what they are: animals, that do not want to be treated like people.

From all I have seen personally, the carriage horses in Central Park want to be treated like horses, and they are treated fairly well as such. They are taken back to the stables to rest when the weather is too extremely hot or cold, are fed several times a day, and are rested for long periods of time. They get adequate exercise, are madly adored by children on the street who feed them treats, and have the company of other horses most of the time. I have never once seen a driver use his whip to urge a horse on, mostly because the horses have walked the route a thousand times and know exactly what they’re doing. Most of them are well-tempered horses who are used to the sights and sounds of the city, although there have been a few incidents of horses spooking at car horns and such and hurting themselves; one did, in fact, die this way a few years ago. And there have also been cases of horses being dehydrated during the hot summer months, but measures have been taken since then to provide them with better access to water.

If we allow PETA to brainwash us into thinking that because what carriage horses do looks less than appealing to us as people it must be wrong, we will only be adding to a culture of ignorance about our fellow creatures. Just because we don’t want to pull carriages and eat oats out of a bucket does not mean that it’s not a perfectly suitable thing for a horse to do. I’m sure there are aspects of their lives that could use improving, and I hope very much that, if nothing else, PETA’s public outcry will push the carriage horse industry to improve all conditions for the horses as much as they can. But shutting them down because we think we know what’s best isn’t going to help anything; it will only put a lot of good horses out of a job and probably out of a good home.

The (Not) Comsuming Culture

Working at an office populated mostly by attractive young women (our boss is an old French guy who gets what he wants) is strange in many ways, as I'm sure you can imagine. I'm simultaenously blessed and cursed to be seated in an area that is completely cut off from most of the activity in the gallery, so whatever strange female issues may be going on in the offices is mostly unknown to me. I am alienated very physically from any camaraderie that might occur, but I'm also ignorant about any catfights, back-biting, etc. It's kind of nice.

But there's one thing that I have definitely picked up on from my year and some change here. The women all seem to be putting on a show about what and how much and how often they eat. It's fascinating! I'm sure it's possible that some, maybe even most, of them really do eat salads with no cheese or meat every day, or refrain from all sugar, but I just don't think it's very likely. Yet, while at the gallery, they consume fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and unsweetened beverages, almost to a woman. There are a few of us here (not necessarily me - I'm a sucker for peer pressure, it seems) that allow ourselves to occasionally be seen with a cookie, or a big fat juicy something delicious, but most of us stick to the "we are so perfect we never eat french fries" song and dance. It's bizarre.

Actually, no, it's not bizarre. Because try as we might to be one big happy estrogen-producing family, women are catty bitches, and we will go to ridiculous lengths to look better than one another, for stupid, stupid reasons (mostly men's attention, but that's another blog entry). Especially here, where most of the women involved are thin and beautiful and young, there is a strong urge to try to be the thinnest, most beautiful, youngest, etc. And apparently that means rabbit food. Because God forbid we allow ourselves to enjoy food, or independence from super-model skinny expectations, or sex, or anything visceral. We're women. In order to be respected we have to look like the cover of Vogue and experience as little emotion and pleasure as possible. Ice Queens, all of us. It's ridiculous.

Now, don't think I'm immune. As I said before, I'm a peer pressure floozy. I rarely eat big juicy anythings at work, mostly because I don't want anyone to see me. I'll admit it. But then again, I'm the receptionist and if clients come in and see me taking dripping bites out of Big Macs all the time, well, I might lose my job. (Which in itself is pretty stupid and reinforces the idea that we have to behave in a certain way to be successful, but that's another blog entry entirely.) Also, I have to stick to things that are easy to eat behind the desk, so that if the phone rings I won't drop my sandwich or difficult-to-approach falafel wrap, or whatever. So for practicality's sake I tend to stick to soups, salads, and other small dishes I can hold , whether I recognize my reasoning as faulty or not, I fall right into the "I can consume fewer calories than you in public!" war that seems to be going on in the office psyche.

Sure, I'm certain that there are lots of ladies here who really just enjoy being healthy, but you can't convince me that they don't all go home and chow down on greasy Chinese food and cookies. I sure do.

Really cute moment.

Yesterday as I was trying to keep myself awake after a night of fitful sleep, and putting an old friend on a plane in the wee hours, an elderly lady came into the gallery. She was very nice and asked to see a catalogue of Michele Oka Doner's work, which she had never heard of before she saw a picture on my desk.

She took the catalogue aside and looked at it for a while, then up at me and said, "This is the most exciting thing I've seen in a long time!"

She was very earnest about it. Not being annoying or asking dumb questions or demanding information out of me. Just really, really excited and nice. She got herself into kind of a tizzy, then took a press release and set off into the bowels of the gallery to look around. "I'm supposed to be on my way to a hospital," she told me. "But this comes first. Art is far more vital to life."

What an entrancing lady! I hope she comes back. If we had more people come into the gallery who were as excited and in love with ART itself, I might really enjoy my job. As it is most of our visitors are just gawkers who seem not to feel anything when they look at the work, or stuck-up art snobs who only want to know about technique, or rich people dripping with money and privelege (although I've seen fewer of them over the past few months).

It's sad to see people's reactions - or lack thereof - to art sometimes. Granted, the gallery IS a commercial venture, and if you aren't planning to purchase anything here (ie, if you don't have a few hundred grand at least to throw around) then we can't do much for you on a practical level. But the art is here to be bought and sold only on a very superficial level. Art, as Oscar Wilde put it more eloquently, is "quite useless, practically speaking." But art is really HERE to be experienced. To be entered into with the naivety of a child, with the innocence of... well, an innocent. It is here to awe you and take you someplace where you don't think about money and commerce anymore. And of course not all of it will. There this hideous Jesus Rafael Soto piece in the vitrine right in front of me that makes me puzzled and mildly unhappy to look at, for instance. But why come to an art gallery with an agenda? Why badger the receptionist for information she doesn't have, or look dour, or drag your kid around by its hand? I much prefer, and better understand, people who come in wide-eyed and stand for hours and stare.

"The farewell kiss"

So an Iraqi journalist hurled a really vicious insult, and his shoes, at President Bush over the weekend at a press conference. Muntader al-Zaidi, a television journalist for Al-Baghdadia, apparently used his turn to ask a question instead as a chance to hurl his shoes at Bush's head and yell, "This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!" He was immediately tackled by police officers, beaten badly, and taken into custody, where he remains. You can watch the whole throw-down here on YouTube, from several different vantage points.

One of the directors of the gallery, who's sitting at the desk next to me, is watching the video on repeat and laughing hysterically to himself. And I can definitely agree that the physical situation is pretty funny; as one of the comments at the YouTube site declares: "Looks like President Bush was good at dodgeball." (It's true. Dubya is apparently sporting some mad ninja skills! Who knew?) And the pissed look on his face right afterward is serious YouTube gold.

But it's much more than that, too. In the Arab world, as the New York Times points out, the act of touching someone with a shoe is a grave insult because it symbolizes that person being lower than the dirt that touched your shoe. Calling someone a dog is similarly heinous, because Arabs consider dogs particularly dirty and unworthy animals. For his audacity, Al-Zaidi remains in custody and will probably face up to seven years in prison for aggression against a visiting head of state. He has become an overnight hero in Iraq and abroad. He's been awarded for his bravery by a Libyan group. People of all types, from all over Iraq, have taken to the streets in support of his courage, throwing their own shoes at American convoys and burning American flags.

One more reminder that the Iraqis hate us. And they are being joined by an ever-larger inernational community of people who love to watch President Bush being cut down in public as our figurehead. And what's more, most of us here in America love watching him dodge shoes, or trying to talk his way out of interview questions, stumbling over every syllable, or pretending to have some sort of relevence in the government at this point. He's hilarious. Watching him fail is funny. Especially now, when we have something better, someONE better, to look forward to.

But I'm feeling very conflicted about it. It's strange. I've hated this guy since day numero uno. He's in so deep with oil companies he's practically oozing slime, he stole an election (or two), he can't speak to save his life or he would have become a televangelist, and he's been at the head of one of the most blatanly corrupt and shamelessly money-grubbing, war-mongering administrations in history. I fully expect that the crimes of him and his cronies will come to light and go down in history as far dirtier than Nixon and his goons could have ever hoped to be. I get enraged when I think of the way Bush has abused his power and that of our country to protect and industry that doesn't deserve protection. I... well I downright hate the guy. He's a dick.

But there's still a measure of discomfort bubbling in my stomach as I watch him dodge those shoes on YouTube. Even as I see the gleam of pissed-off entitlement creep into his eyes, I think, "Hey, that's MY guy! Leave him alone!" I think what it boils down to is that I'm already embarassed by him on a much larger scale - he's made a mockery of what the idea of America is supposed to stand for. Watching him grovel for public sympathy in the news recently, trying to seem like a nice guy for the cameras, admitting in an interview that he was underprepared for the war, it gives me the squirmies. As if suddenly we're supposed to forget all the bullshit he's put the world through for the past eight years and feel bad for the guy. It sickens me. He's the President of the United States of America. Even if I enjoy a good chuckle over his grammar faux pas doesn't mean I want to see the leader of the free world - MY free world, for better or worse - being not only ridiculed but insulted in such a way that he must literally cower.

I cannot really reconcile myself with the idea that the President, still in power even if only in name, must bear this ridicule. It bodes ill for our country in a much more upsetting way, I think, than the oft-repeated headlines about American flag burnings and anti-American demonstrations across the world. On the one hand, I appreciate more pointed attacks being aimed at Bush himself, as he represents a type of American that is on its way out of power - general anti-American protests label all of us as that same type. But on the other hand, he is still arguably the most powerful man on earth, and he is MY most poewrful man on earth, even though I never would have voted for him.

I don't feel bad for the guy. But I do think he deserves more dignity than he has been getting or even demanding lately, and I hate to think of what this means for the Presidency in general. It bothers me in much the same way that watching the video footage of a sad and grey-bearded Saddam Hussein being poked and prodded by a doctor after his capture bothered me. He might have been a dick, but he was still a human being - a powerful human being who used to command the respect of the world - and worthy of decency. In much the same spirit, then, I say: "Let Bush go out with dignity." If he wants to recant later in life, write a book about how he wasn't ready for war, make public appearances where he invites shoes to be thrown, whatever - let him. But for now, he is still the President. He may be our worst President. But he is President, nonetheless. Let him pass into history on his own terms, and let us judge him on those terms later, but for goodness' sake, let him have what he's left for himself of his own dignity.